Q1

Rubens Barrichello led the cars out at the start of Q1 and his teammate Pastor Maldonado briefly headed the times with a 1?óÔé¼Ôäó49.893.

Sebastian Vettel joined the track and set the fastest time with a 1’47.014 ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ but it was shortlived as both Button and Hamilton went faster still, Button with a 1’46.993

Vitaly Petrov was the big casualty of the session ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ despite battling with Bruno Senna for 17th he was knocked out with a 1?óÔé¼Ôäó49.835.

He was joined by the Kovalainen, Trulli, Glock, D?óÔé¼ÔäóAmbrosio, Ricciardo and Liuzzi. This means that Vitantonio Liuzzi?óÔé¼Ôäós five-grid penalty for causing a collision doesn?óÔé¼Ôäót affect the grid.

Drivers eliminated in Q1

18

Vitaly Petrov

Renault

1?óÔé¼Ôäó49.835

19

Heikki Kovalainen

Lotus-Renault

1?óÔé¼Ôäó50.948

20

Jarno Trulli

Lotus-Renault

1?óÔé¼Ôäó51.012

21

Timo Glock

Virgin-Cosworth

1?óÔé¼Ôäó52.154

22

Jerome D?óÔé¼ÔäóAmbrosio

Virgin-Cosworth

1?óÔé¼Ôäó52.363

23

Daniel Ricciardo

HRT-Cosworth

1?óÔé¼Ôäó52.404

24

Vitantonio Liuzzi

HRT-Cosworth

1?óÔé¼Ôäó52.810

Q2

Vettel set the first fastest time of the second session but was promptly beaten by Button.

Kamui Kobayashi crashed, bouncing over several kerbs and into the barriers on his first flying lap. The session was red flagged and, as Kobayashi had yet to set a lap, he will start from 17th tomorrow.

The session was restarted with eight minutes to go.

Bruno Senna battled to 15th place, with a best time of 1?óÔé¼Ôäó48.662. He complained of traffic during his first flying lap.

In the last few moments of the session, Paul di Resta and Sergio Perez battled for 10th ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ with Perez initially taking 10th, only to be beaten by two tenths of a second.

Lewis Hamilton limped back to the pits with a puncture to his right rear tyre.

Q3

Q3 began with a queue of cars waiting to get onto the track. The top six cars headed out, with the Mercedes and Force India drivers deciding to stay in the pits and wait.

Sebastian Vettel was fastest in the first sector while Jenson Button was fastest in the second by a tenth. Vettel?óÔé¼Ôäós first lap beat Button and Hamilton with a 1’44.381 to go top – two tenths of a second faster than Fernando Alonso?óÔé¼Ôäós track record set last year.

With just two minutes of the session to go, Hamilton retired to the pits to save his tyres.

The Force India drivers stayed in the pits and didn?óÔé¼Ôäót set a time, deciding instead to preserve their tyres for the race.

In the last few moments of the session, Mark Webber managed to set the second fastest time and Vettel abandoned his lap with his 11th pole of the season guaranteed.

Vettel’s pole was no surprise. However, Lewis’ tyre puncture at the end of Q2 and refuelling woe, sums up the very unlucky year he’s been having. I expected him to gain 2-3 tenths on Button as that’s the qualifying differiential this year, and as such, should have had P2.

I’m not sure it makes much difference. It’s a shame for him, of course – he probably would have been ahead of Button – but they’re still both on the second row and from there, anything can happen (as Alonso showed at Monza).

At least because Hamilton set a ‘banker’ lap in Q2 on his hard tires, he didn’t go out of quali early. And he gained the set back by only running once in Q3. He still has every chance of competing in the race.

Well, looks like we’ll have to wait for Vettel being Champion. BTW, Schu’s saving tyres could prove good tomorrow. In the “IF” things, I’d really like to see him on Webber’s seat for the whole next season. I’m sure he could strike many more places with a RB car. It’s just dreaming, but let’s see if Ross Brawn can create a challenger car for 2012

Not the most exciting of qualifying sessions we’ve seen but like I said on Twitter, as a fan you just have to take the rough with the smooth. I feel we’ve had significantly more smooth than rough this season so I won’t complain!

Cracking stuff from Vettel once more and a reasonably large gap over his team mate. I fear Webber will scupper his chances once more with Button ready to pounce and lets not rule out Alonso’s sublime starts this year.

Well done to the Force India guys too. Disaster from Renault, their worst all season I believe.

Finally congratulations to Ricciardo, 0.4s over Liuzzi. Another Vettel in the making?!

Surely Paul di Resta would have been better off setting a last-minute lap on the harder tires?

He’d have gained two positions on the grid, and could then have bottled his rivals up behind him while getting his slowest stint out of the way. Then later in the race, he’d have had both track position and the quicker tires.

The turn 10 chicane is such a disaster. As DC mentioned there is absolutely nothing dignified about an F1 car bouncing across kerbs like that. Not only does it eliminate a possible overtaking opportunity but it quite frankly looks silly.

This is what I thought too but if you look where Kobayashi hit the wall, there is a road there. The entire straight could be funnelled so that if someone has brake issues they’ll get diverted down that road.

Can anyone see a reason for those kerbs being there at all. I don’t think they create a passing opportunity & the track would flow much better without them.
In fact a passing opportunity might be created down the next straight without them.

if you have the corner as-is without the chicane it would be a super-fast corner with no run-off & if you try & make it tighter its a heavy braking zone with no run-off.

the super-fast corner with no run-off option means if anything happens there its not only a big accident but also a high possibility of a car hitting the wall & then bouncing back onto the circuit infront of other cars.

The heavy braking zone with no run-off means there is more possibility of cars locking up & hitting the wall creating more red flags or safety cars. They always try to have an escape road on street circuits to avoid this.

Also there is the danger of a brake failure or stuck throttle which would be huge issue without adequate run-off at that sort of corner.

the chicane as it is may not be the most ideal solution but its the only thing they can safely do at that part of the circuit.

besides its a nice little challenging corner not too different from the pre-94 Acque Minerale configeration at imola.

Reposting this from last year when it came up (as it inevitably will next year as well):

The main reason for the chicane, as I understand, is that thereâ€™s absolutely no run-off area at the corner. Right behind the walls where Kimi crashed are our old parliament house, Victoria Concert Hall and Victoria Theatre, and they donâ€™t want cars coming close to these conserved buildings at 250km/h.

Iâ€™m not sure how they can work around that, pretty sure the chicanes have to stay, unless the track layout is changed. Thereâ€™s talk of changing it next year, but not this corner though..

Of course now we know that the track was, in fact, not changed this year, either at this corner or anywhere else. There’s also no talk at all this year of getting the track changed, I suppose there is no easy solution (if one sees it as a problem in the first place).

Hi Keith, Button was 5 thousandths of a second faster than Hamilton, rather than hundredths. After 18 years of following F1 I still can’t get my head round how close the times are. Remember when 3 drivers qualified with exactly the same time?

After a wee bit of searching I find Tabac(turn12) is 4th gear and turn ten is a 3rd gear, perhaps the bouncy cars(again!) are better headlines than non crashing cars. Oh Lordy help us when Sky get there hands on it.

While on paper it should be no surprise, you still gotta love seeing the top 5 rows of the grid occupied in order of manufacturer points by the top teams. Hundreds of engineers, working for different constructors, come up with totally different machines that somehow manage to nail lap times with maybe a 2 second gap covering all 10 cars. AND in the correct order! Pretty cool stuff, and it also reinforces my belief that the VERY TOP drivers are almost interchangeable.

I understand Force India & Schumacher’s strategy but not sure why Hamilton did that? He should have had qualified which may have help him to finish 3rd if not 2nd as for now he will start of the dirty side of the track.Very happy to see Webber putting on the performance he was struggling the whole Friday,Kobayashi finally succeeding to fly & hit the wall as he did tried that in one of the practice session.Bit of a shock to see both Renault struggling.But with tyre change & drivers with different strategy with may be some safety cars we do have a race in our hand.

I guess havinf SV at the front of everything can be a little boring but I think of it more like when Tiger Woods was hot in the ten or so years ago and winning everything by a dozen strokes from the rest of the field. It was stunning to watch someone (tiger) who was so incredibly good and wonder what the hell thay were having for breakfast – its the same with SV, we’re watching a rare instance of brilliance and no doubt coming dominance that leaves all others in the shade. And I wouldnt put the Shue in the same class even with his seven titles – I like to see clean racing.

On another point, there seems to be a lot of comments disregarding Webber – have a look at the points standing. There’s a better than even chance that it will be a red bull 1 2 for the championship. Ham is brittle and button is number 2 to ham so im sorry to hold the pin close to the bubble.